Sex, Lies, and Cigarettes

The spectre of the independent woman smoker had haunted Canadian societal leaders since the nineteenth century. Women of this persuasion had rejected marriage and taken up work that interested and sustained them, were sure of their own minds and willing to share their opinions freely, and tested the boundaries of decorum by such acts as public smoking. Labelled a “New Woman” at the beginning of this period and a “Modern Girl” by the 1920s and 1930s, the independent woman was frequently portrayed as a smoker. She was often an early entrant to the new professions like nursing or social work or to the skilled labour force or an active member of the arts, and her image made larger statements about equal rights for women by asserting women’s rights to brandish cigarettes in public. This profile of the New Woman grew into a “type of female personality,” which developed into the Modern Girl. In Canada, as in the United States and Britain, women who subscribed to modernity were identified as well-educated, independent-spirited, and insistent on the vote and a public role in society, while at the same time often wanting a fulfilling domestic life, either in conventional companionate marriages or in same-sex households. Hence, in this construction smoking carried with it a symbolic claim to many of the pleasures now taken for granted by privileged women in our society.

In Britain, the New Woman was also often a suffragette, demanding the right to vote. British journals carried advertisements for cigarettes (“Vallora” by name) and even launched “Votes for Women” cigarettes in 1910. They were sold alongside “Votes for Women” soap, marmalade, chocolate, and sweet pea seeds. Partly because of the Canadian suffrage movement’s close ties to temperance, no such products were sold in this country, but the image of the independent-minded New Woman/Modern Girl as suffragist otherwise thrived in this country as well. In addition to representations of independent-mindedness, the intellectual and often artistic New Woman might also have been considered sexually experienced. However, unlike her sisters who had been forced into this nether world through economic straits, the sophisticate was generally from a privileged background. She was often a recognizable figure in society.